Partisan Warfare

A showdown between the Republican Congress and President Clinton over taxes should put the tax-cut issue front and center in time for George W. Bush's national debut at the GOP convention in Philadelphia.

In one week in Washington, Republican leaders have hustled through three bills they call tax relief for the middle class: an increase in the standard deduction for many married couples; a repeal of the estate tax on inheritances; and an increase in the ceiling on how much money Americans can save, tax-free, in IRA's and 401(k)'s.

Democrats say most of the benefits would go to the rich. Mr. Clinton has threatened to veto the marriage and estate cuts.

Polls show that there is no popular mandate for the kind of big tax cut on which Bush has built his economic plan. For most Americans, a tax cut is "not way up on the list," says Lee Miringoff of the Marist College Institute of Public Opinion.

So rather than swim upstream by trying to push a big across-the-board tax cut on indifferent voters, congressional Republicans are offering a menu of smaller, politically popular cuts that they say make the tax code more fair.

Two things seem likely to happen. Both candidates will use the tax issue to energize their respective bases, and the convention-time discussion of congressional tax breaks and possible Clinton vetoes will focus attention on the differences between the Bush and Gore plans for the use of expected budget surpluses.

Republicans hope the marriage-tax issue will have special appeal to uncommitted voters who will get a close look at Bush for the first time during the televised convention. And, needless to say, tax cuts are extremely popular with the party's conservative base.

Republican pollster John McLaughlin says that Congress's timing helps Bush because the marriage tax is an "important symbolic difference" with Gore "that galvanizes the Republican base." Further, the marriage and estate tax cuts appeal to the independent voters among the "new investor class, baby boomers and upper middle class voters that Clinton made inroads with."

Gore has been telling audiences - especially women and minorities - that the Bush "tax cut for the wealthy" will take the country back to the bad old days of exploding budget deficits. "We've been there, done that, seen the results, still paying the bill," Gore sniffs.

The vice president attempted to show up the weaknesses of the big tax cut this week in Texas, where he argued the case that Bush's big 1999 state tax cut benefited Texas corporations at the expense of the poor.

The class issue is "an Achilles heel" for the Bush campaign, says Schwab Washington Research Group chief strategist Greg Valliere. "Bush is very sensitive to charges that Republicans are the party that favors the wealthy … He knows it's a weakness."

As the debate intensifies, "Bush will try to emphasize that the middle class wil do well with his cuts, even though statistics say the wealthier do better."

Political scientist John Green of the University of Akron says Bush made a "strategic mistake" in committing so early on in the primaries to a $1.3 trillion tax cut.

Green says going into their convention, Republicans "want some vetoes, to be able to change the debate away from this class-based" argument of the Democrats', "to 'we're doing good things for ordinary people.' Five nights of that could go a long way to changing the image of the issue."

Bottom line, says Valliere: "Tax cuts are inevitable, and we're only arguing over the composition."